Home › World › Why Washington approved Javelins for Lithuania
Why Washington approved Javelins for Lithuania
Summary
A retrospective on the US State Department's 21 December 2021 approval of an anti-tank missile sale to a NATO ally.
What did it mean when the U.S. State Department approved a sale of anti-tank missiles to Lithuania? On 21 December 2021, it cleared the transfer of 341 FGM-148 Javelin anti-tank guided missiles and 30 command launch units to the NATO ally, amid rising tensions with Russia.
What was approved
The package was specific: 341 missiles and 30 command launch units. The approval concerned a NATO member, and it was framed at the time against the backdrop of growing friction between Moscow and the West.
The wider frame
The sale sat within a pattern that some scholars and journalists have described with terms such as Second Cold War, Cold War II or New Cold War. These labels refer to heightened geopolitical tensions in the post-Cold War era, usually between the United States and NATO on one side and Russia or China on the other. Some commentators have used them as a comparison with the original Cold War, while others have discouraged their use for ongoing tensions.
The approval itself was a concrete step rather than a rhetorical one: a defined quantity of weapons for an allied state, cleared in Washington while tensions with Russia were rising.
